December 5, 2009

Several years ago, overwhelmed by the flood of material unleashed annually by the publishing industry, I decided to establish a screening program by purchasing only books that at least one reviewer had described as ''astonishing.''

Previously, I had limited my purchases to merchandise deemed ''luminous'' or ''incandescent,'' but this meant I ended up with an awful lot of novels about bees, Provence or Vermeer. The problem with incandescent or luminous books is that they veer toward the introspective, the arcane or the wise, while I prefer books that go off like a Roman candle. When I buy a book, I don't want to come away wiser or happier or even better informed. I want to get blown right out of the water by the author's breathtaking pyrotechnics. I want to come away astonished.

That's Joe Queenan, writing in the New York Times in 2007, but now here's the New York Times with its 10 Best Books of 2009, calling a memoir "luminous." How can I trust their judgment? To be fair, they didn't call anything "incandescent" or "astonishing."

I've never been able to believe that such women exist. But then I grew up in a household in which it was a major achievement for my mother to get herself out of her housedress and leave the house to do the daily food shop at 3 PM.

I have heard that reading while under the influence of Ambien will make all literature into a far more intense, almost raisin like, experience of astonishing luminescense until that sought for moment of pure nirvanah when one meets with the goddess of sleep.

This is a brief description of a book that I will never read: "...her development as a poet and writer, and her struggles to navigate marriage and young motherhood even as she descends into alcoholism". Lacks luminosity.

Query; What causes an author to expose themselves to millions of readers? Is it a need for recognition? Is it a catharsis ? Is it an exercise in manipulating others? Whatever the reason, the more astonishing and incandescent the better.

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